Part 41 (2/2)
It was during this period, as I began to worry that my investment would yield nothing, that at a small gathering I was introduced to the ladies known about town as the Four Widows.These were the most prized women in London, a quartet of fas.h.i.+onable charmers, joined by the common fate of being young and rich, beauties whose husbands-all considerably older-had done them the great favor of dying early in their marriages.
No hundred women in London were pursued as energetically as these four, each of whom was worth at least six or seven thousand a year. Their every social activity was reported upon by the newspapers and magazines. The clothes they wore, the food they ate, and the plays they attended became instantly fas.h.i.+onable.Their very desirability made them un.o.btainable, but my father had taught me-perhaps another piece of anomalously good advice-that the more an object was believed un.o.btainable, the more accessible it was to a man of daring.
I chose to be a man of daring. I would make one of those widows my own, and I cared not which one.
Or so I said. I selected for my prize Lady Caroline Worthington, because while I wished to be a man of daring, I did not choose to be a man of excessive daring. Lady Caroline was the least pursued of the widows because she was judged the plainest by a critical world. I certainly thought her not very pretty when I first met her, and when I first set my sights upon her, but how wrong was the world and how wrong was I. Lady Caroline was, in fact, the most beautiful of the four, perhaps the most beautiful of women, but hers was a subtle beauty, the sort a man did not notice at first but that crept upon him at a slow and steady pace until, one day, he found that this was loveliness of a species so powerful, so overwhelming, it froze the air within his lungs.
I shall spare you the details of the courts.h.i.+p. Suffice it to say that I made a point of finding myself in Lady Caroline's way. Shortly after we met, events conspired so that we had mutual friends and we moved in mutual circles.We found ourselves near one another at gatherings, at b.a.l.l.s, and at operas.We would talk and I watched her lovely gray eyes light up as she discovered that her views on religion and politics and literature were mirrored by mine.Yes, I conducted researches to make certain I knew of her opinions, that she might discover we were of like minds, but we were of like minds. I might have antic.i.p.ated her views, because, indeed, I shared them with her, and conversation with Lady Caroline was always a true delight.
We would spend hours together, talking upon subjects about which she cared so pa.s.sionately, and she would sometimes catch herself and blush at her enthusiasm, which I found charming beyond words. Nowhere could a man find a woman more clever and modest and kind. Had she been penniless, I would have done anything to possess her. But she was rich, and that was ever so much better.
The enormity of my love would amount to very little, however, if the lady did not love me in return. My first hint that I might meet success came on a brisk Sunday afternoon in September of 1713, as we strolled with the bon ton through St. James's Park. The air was cool but not cold-winter had announced its imminent arrival, so all of London was out, enjoying the weather while the opportunity allowed it. Here were great lords upon their horses and ladies in their carriages. Everyone wore their finery, and those of us who chose to display ourselves on foot walked in easy satisfaction, the sun upon our faces.There were suits and dresses in every color of the rainbow, and silver and gold thread sparkled like the stars of the heavens. Lap dogs merrily chased peac.o.c.ks. It was a glorious day to be a man of means, or to be masquerading as one.
Lady Caroline looked particularly resplendent in a gown of exquisitely pale yellow and embossed with elaborate floral embroidery. Her hat, wide brimmed and feathered, sat atop her piled hair, which some fools called mousy in color but I thought the most charming shade of brown. More than anything, however, Lady Caroline smiled with the pure pleasure of being in good company and in good health and in fine weather. She glowed in her joy and vitality, and there is nothing more alluring than the proximity of a woman who feels alive, and, I fancied, in love.
I flatter myself that I looked quite well in my own red velvet suit with large silver b.u.t.tons, beneath it a sky-blue waistcoat, and beneath that a s.h.i.+rt that erupted with frills like the froth of the ocean. My newly made queue periwig showed off my face to its finest advantage, and not a few women stopped to look at me, but though they might have regarded me as the finest specimen of manhood in the park, I had eyes for none of them. I did not so much as notice when they stared or gestured toward me with their fans or giggled behind their gloved hands. I was aware of none of it, but Lady Caroline saw it all. She watched them notice me, and she watched me ignore them. She saw that I looked at no woman but her, and she smiled.
We walked in easy and, I imagined, libidinous silence for some time, surrounded by our companions. Then fate handed me a great favor. The other widows strayed hither. The other suitors strayed yon. Lady Caroline and I were alone-no one within fifteen feet of us in that great Sunday throng. It was as close to privacy as the St. James procession would afford.
”Mr. January,” she said, casting those lovely gray eyes downward. ”I hope you do not harbor any misconceptions about our friends.h.i.+p.” Her cheeks turned pink, and she pressed her red lips together until they were as pale as her lovely skin.
”If you are my friend,” I said, ”then I am the happiest of men.”
She smiled and blushed more deeply and took a moment to collect her thoughts. ”Sir, I will be plain with you for the regard in which I hold you. I do not seek to marry again. Not now. Perhaps not ever.”
”And that is what you think?” I asked her. ”I seek out your company because I wish to marry you? Are you so certain that I have no interest in your ideas and your conversation and your taste?”
”I know you and I are very companionable,” she said, looking less certain of herself. Perhaps she had hoped I would not wish to discuss this topic at length but merely take my marching orders. I was too clever for that. ”It is because we are so companionable that I must be direct with you. I cannot allow you to think I would lead you where we cannot go. My marriage to Lord Albert was not a happy one. I am not so nave to think you have not heard the rumors.”
Of course I had heard the rumors. Sir Albert was some thirty years Lady Caroline's senior, perhaps fifty or fifty-five. He was greatly fat and inclined to excessive perspiration and flatulence and the stench that accompanied such leaky vessels. Beyond his lack of personal charms, Sir Albert was said to be a demon of a man. He was not, like my father, inclined to violence, but he was cruel, delighting in humiliating and insulting his wife, mocking her before her friends and his. I had heard that he would sometimes come home drunk with wh.o.r.es and rut loudly within her hearing.This, however, was preferable to the times he turned his s...o...b..ring attentions upon his wife. I had heard it all. Sir Albert had been a vile brute, and his death had been a gift of the heavens to Lady Caroline.
”I do not listen to gossip,” I told her.
”Then listen to me,” she said with a resoluteness I could not but admire. ”I see marriage as nothing but a state of enslavement. My father sold me to a horrible man because he was a baronet and he wished his family name to rise in the world through his daughter. Only once Sir Albert died did my own inheritance come into my possession, and now that it is mine, that I am a free and independent woman, I shall never enslave myself again.” She now stopped and looked at me directly. Her face was red, but with anger now, not embarra.s.sment. Her eyes were moist with tears, and she looked like a being divine. ”I shall always enjoy your company, Mr. January, as long as you enjoy mine, but there can be no more than that.You are a gentleman of fortune, and perhaps you are too modest to see how women admire you, but they do.You can have your pick of them.”
I reached out to take her hand but then pulled it back-a calculated move of tenderness and restraint. Ladies always find it affecting. ”The admiration of women I do not know is of no importance to me.You, however, are of the utmost importance. But understand that I am not a predator, Lady Caroline, and you are not my prey. I seek nothing but to be in your presence in any capacity that you will have me. I shall be content with as little as you choose to offer, and I shall never ask you for anything more.”
She nodded and we walked on. Her face, I observed from the corner of her eye, changed moment by moment-satisfaction, relief, sorrow, pride. She had made her wishes known. She would not marry me. She would not marry anyone.
For my part, I showed no expression, certainly not my true one, which was joy. This was a woman with a pure soul and a good heart. She was as unblemished in her character as a creature of flesh could be, and she had made her wishes known-both those of which she spoke and those which she did not intend to reveal. I believed she and I would be married within the month.
Only one week later, I exited the Drury Lane theater with Lady Caroline and nearly a dozen others, including the other members of the widows' quartet.We had just seen Addison's Cato and stood upon the street, taking in the power and pathos of Mr. Booth's performance while we waited for our servants to fetch our carriages. It was a cool night, cloudless and bright with stars.About us, peddlers cried out their pies and oysters and apples to the emerging crowd.Wh.o.r.es beckoned to gentlemen. Street acrobats walked upon their hands. Legless beggars walked upon their hands as well, dragging their stumps through the refuse. Hungry children wept for food. It was a London night in all its beauty and chaos and misery.
There, upon those magical streets, s.h.i.+vering in the cool air, Lady Caroline stood next to me in easy silence.We did not speak, but it was not for lack of words, but rather for their unimportance. She looked at me and I at her, and I sensed that my devotion, my kindness, my compatibility, and my apparent willingness not to seek her hand had all done their work.
Here she was, this marvelous woman with her broad face and narrow eyebrows and heavy jaw-all features that should have made her unlovely, and when I looked at her, I thought her lovelier than anything imaginable. And here was I, in all my manly beauty, oblivious to my charms, with eyes only for her. She reached out, her fingers crooked and tentative, and took my hand in hers. I felt the smoothness of her glove against my own, and my heart was carried aloft upon the delicious entangling of our satin-clad fingers. I knew that we were meant to be together, and that we would be together, and that any difficulties our love might face-such as her inevitable discovery that I was a penniless charlatan-would be both temporary and easily sorted.
That was the moment my father appeared before us. He was not there, and then he was, a horrifying mask of ugliness with his flattened nose and broken teeth and crooked jaw, courtesy of my hammer blow. Before I had time to fully understand what I gazed upon, he reached out and gave one of Lady Caroline's b.r.e.a.s.t.s a hard squeeze. She cried out, and as I turned, he struck me in the face. He did not use a hammer, which was a kindness to be sure. I was horrified and terrified and in no inconsiderable amount of pain, but I was also a little bit grateful. When my father was involved, things could always be worse. And then they often were.
I lay upon the ground, mud and horse s.h.i.+t upon my clothes and in my hair. My jaw ached where my father had hit me. He stood over me like a colossus, waving his fist in the air while my goodhearted Caroline and our friends watched.
”Someone do something!” cried Mr. Langham, a gentleman who had never much cared for me, for he had had designs upon Lady Caroline himself. ”Someone stop that man!” Who that someone might be, if not himself, he did not suggest, though I doubt he intended one of the ladies ought to take on the fury of my father. I do believe he would have preferred such an outcome, however, than be forced to throw himself into the fray.
While I readily condemn him for his cowardice, I am not entirely without sympathy. My father was a tall man, broad in the shoulders and thick in the arms. He wore his hair natural and long and wild, and while he had never been what might be called handsome-I was fortunate enough to take my looks from my mother-the recent reordering of his face, courtesy my mason's hammer, had rendered him something of a grotesque. Beneath the scruff of his negligent beard, his face was like that of a smashed statue, put back together with some pieces missing.
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